Telly maker Vizio has agreed to pay out $2.2 million to make a case claiming it unlawfully collected viewing data on its customers go away.

The US Federal Trade Commission said the company’s smart TV technology had captured data on what was being viewed on screen and transmitted it to the firm’s servers. The data was later flogged off to third parties.

Vizio insisted that the data sent could not be matched up to individuals and the data was not paired with personally identifiable information such as name or contact information.

To be fair the FTC didn’t say that. It did say that the practices challenged by the government related only to the use of viewing data in the ‘aggregate’ to create summary reports measuring viewing audiences or behaviours”.

More than 11 million smart TVs have grassed up their owners since February 2014.

"Vizio collected unique data from each household with a Vizio smart TV that included not only second-by-second viewing information, but also the household’s IP address, nearby access points, post code, and other information,” the FTC said in a blog post explaining the settlement.

The settlement kills off Vizio’s unauthorised tracking, and makes clear that smart TV makers should get people’s consent before collecting and sharing television viewing information.

Vizio also agreed to more prominently tell its customers how data is stored and collected, and to seek firmer, clearer consent beforehand. The company has been ordered to delete the data it collected.

China seems to expanding its AMOLED capacity, according to Digitimes Research.

Seven China-based panel makers have been expanding existing or setting up new AMOLED production capacities. The numbers are impressive with total annual capacity estimated to increase from 272,000 square meters in 2016 to 1.584 million square meters in 2018, 4.464 million square meters in 2019, and 7.864 million square meters in 2020 at a 2016-2020 CAGR of 13 percent.

By 2020, BOE Technology will be the largest China-based AMOLED panel maker and make more than third of the total annual production capacity, Tianma Micro-electronics 17.6 percent, Visionox 14 percent, EverDisplay Optronics (Shanghai) 11.6 percent, China Star Optoelectronics Technology 9.5 percent, Truly Opto-Electronics 7.8 percent and Royole 4.5 percent.

To put all this in some perspective Samsung Display and LG Display had combined annual production capacity of 4.945 million square meters for AMOLED panels in 2016 and the total capacity will increase to 15.130 million square meters in 2020 at a 2016-2020 CAGR of 32.3 per cent.

But these two will focus on expanding their flexible AMOLED panels, with the proportion for flexible models to hike from 46.1 per cent in 2016 to 72.6 per cent in 2020.

All this means that China will soon be taking care of its domestic supply and be presumably worrying foreign companies too.

Foxconn and Sharp are to set up a $6.95 billion10.5G or 11G LCD TV panel factory in China. Needless to say Foxconn is stumping up most of the cash and Sharp is to providing the manufacturing technology.

Foxconn owns most of Sharp and the pair have been scouting around for a factory site in Guangzhou City, southern China. However they may talk with other cities for better offers – when you have that sort of cash to invest you can be picky and hang around and wait for tax sweeteners. A bit of the total investment is expected to come from the local government.

The pair are involved with Japan-based Sakai Display Products which together with Sharp makes a fifth of the world's global output, ranking third next to Samsung Display and LG Display.

Sakai Display Products produces LCD TV panels at a 10G factory, the new facility to be set up in China will use larger glass substrates to lower production cost and is planned to start production in 2019. It does indicate though that since Sharp was bought out by Foxconn, it is less interested in propping up Japanise manufacturing.

LeEco is a company that used to be known as LeTV and now, since they have phones, TVs, smart bikes and many other products they decided to change the name to LeEco. The company plans to launch a few TV devices and a few phones in less than a week, and it is a great step from the Chinese based manufacturer.

All our eyes were on very innovative Xiaomi company while at the same time companies like Oppo and LeEco, and Meizu were making really good phones. Now LeEco wants to launch at least two phones - Le S3 comes with Snapdragon 652, 3000mAh battery, 5.5" Full HD display, Quick Charge 3.0, a 16-megapixel rear camera, a fingerprint scanner, and Android 6.0. it should sell for the great price of $169 after $60 saving. The regular price seems to be $299.

The bigger phone is called Le Max 2 and this is a 5.7-inch phone with Snapdragon 820 processor, Quad HD display, 21-megapixel camera, 3100 mAh battery, fingerprint reader and Android 6.0 out of the box. The phone is set to launch on October 19th with 4GB/32GB storage for $289.00 after saving and there will be a 6GB with 128GB storage option too.

What peaked our interest were four TVs that the company plans to launch. They will come with LeEco Super4 X43, LeEco Super4 X55, LeEco Super4 X65 and LeEco uMax85 TV. Since Vizio remains to operate as a separate brand, LeEco will mostly fight with its own TVs. We have a strong feeling that LeECO sales won’t be great unless they offer some huge discounts. It takes a while to make a TV brand.

You can ask Hisense who is advertising its 8K TVs for all European championship league games (football aka soccer ), watched by millions. We still doubt that any of them even realized what Hisense is doing as it is after Sony, Samsung, LG and other big companies in the quite crowded smart TV market.

If LeEco reduces the prices of TV as much as it has reduced the prices of its phones, they might be off for a good start in the US market. We will watch this space closely.

Despite having limited content, 4K Ultra HD televisions are expected to double sales to 15 million units in the US in 2016.

Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Technology Association said that the next-generation TVs are now being adopted at a faster rate than predecessor high-definition TVs. Sales of 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray players are also selling at a fast rate.

Shapiro said that 62 percent of consumers plan to buy a consumer electronics viewing device in the next year while a third will buy a smartphone, and 29 percent plan to buy a TV.

“Consumers are showing a strong preference for 4K,” which has four times as many on-screen pixels as HDTVs. It’s faster and more robust than HDTV.”

By 2017, 4K UHD TV sales will hit 20 million a year in the U.S. That number will grow to 23 million in 2018, and 26 million by 2019. The 2016 growth rate is 105 percent above the units sold for 2015, he said.

More than 700,000 4K Blu-ray players have been sold so far in 2016, Shapiro said. Blu-ray is now 10 years old as a technology, launched in support of HDTV content. Now all of the major studios are releasing content on the 4K UHD format. Netflix is also streaming movies in 4K formats online. More than 500,000 4K Blu-ray discs have been sold so far, according to the Digital Entertainment Group.

Shapiro said that 4 out of 10 TVs that ship this year will be 4K UltraHD, so sales of HDTVs remain strong as well. Almost every TV set over 50 inches diagonal is a 4K set, Shapiro said.

Prices are dropping too. The average 4K TV price in 2015 was $1,048, and that is dropping to $861 in 2016. Shapiro said that the new ATSC 3.0 television standard is being finalized for 4K transmission over Internet Protocol and on mobile devices, and he expects to see TVs that use the standard at the Consumer Electronics Show in early 2017.

Nvidia might be getting ready to launch a new Shield Android TV console later this year.

According to a filing to the FCC made public, Nvidia has applied for permission to flog a new console with a model number P2897. Obviously the rest of the filing is time secret but really the only thing that can fit the bill is a new Shield.

Listed under the labeling portion, we see that the device is rectangular and that the console features 802.11ac WiFi. A new shield remote and Controller device also went through the FCC last week.

Since all this is happening at once it seems likely that the new Shield Android TV will be in the shops sometime in autumn. However, Nvidia has applied and obtained FCC approval for things before and we never saw any product in the shops. An updated Shield Tablet went through the FCC and we are still waiting for it to appear.

All this guessing means that it is unclear if the new Shield TV is something new or radical or just a few updated bits stuck inside the existing box. It is also unknown whether Nvidia will launch a new hardware design for the Shield TV or simply stick updated components inside its existing package.

Fruity cargo cult Apple killed its own TV product because it honestly believed that Big Content would do what it told them and played the roll of Game of Thrones's Ramsay Bolton even after its castle wall had been breached.

For those who came in late, Apple wants to make up the money it is starting to lose on iPhones by flogging entertainment services. The only problem is that it still believes that it is in a position to dictate the terms.

According to The Wall Street Journal Apple’s Senior Vice President Eddy Cue is said to have taken the wrong approach, telling TV executives that “time is on my side.”

He also bluffed executives by claiming other networks — specifically Disney and Fox — were already signed up when they weren’t.

Then he tried to play secret squirrel by refusing to show off the Apple TV interface, or “sketch it on the back of a napkin,” as one media executive requested.

He might have got away with that had he not been trying to screw the studios for every penny - a strategy that Steve Jobs pulled off over iTunes. He even asked Disney to put off the royalties Apple would have to pay for several years.

Apple was planning to create skinny bundles of content so that if you paid $30 you got a bundle of Fox, ESPN and Disney content. Instead Cue was embarrassed when Big Content told him to go forth and multiply.

Cue tried to make the best of it by creating original content but since Planet of the Apps and Carpool Karaoke looks so dire that most sensible people would gouge their own eyes out with spoons rather than watch it, things are looking bleak for the Apple TV. After all who is going to buy that when all you get is rubbish programmes?

What is amusing is that Cue, and Apple still believe their own bullshit that Apple is the super-cool, mover and shaker and other companies should consider themselves lucky to give all their profits to it. After all this worked for years with the telcos who were happy to subsidise Jobs’ Dream for years before they worked out it was not making them enough money.

But times have changed. Not only has Big Content moved along since the days of the iPod and iTunes, Apple is not the best way to deliver content any more. Cue and co need to stop adopting the Ramsay Bolton approach to partners, otherwise they are going to continue getting eaten by their own dogs.

While the rest of the world is talking about OLED displays, it seems that 95 per cent of the displays made by Samsung.

Samsung appears to have corned the market and made more than 95 per cent of the total shipments in the first quarter (Q1) of 2016.

UBI Research. said that total global OLED shipments surged to 91.3 million units, with Samsung making up a whopping 95 per cent of this number.

OLED panels have become a preferred choice among smartphone manufacturers the light-emitting layers of an OLED are lighter, easier to produce, can be made in larger sizes and do not require backlighting. OLED can be flexible instead of rigid, which makes it ideal for curved displays and even bendable.

Taking advantage of the demand, Samsung, who is already leading the market, is looking to ramp up its OLED production by increasing its A3 plant production from 15,000 units per month to 105,000 units per month by the year end.

Its closest rival, LG is ramping up its OLED smartphone panel production and may have scored orders from Xiaomi. But Samsung has Huawei and Lenovo under its belt and is reported to be supplying close to 100 million panels to Apple for the iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 next year.

Samsung is pretty sure it can keep its title of the world’s top flat-screen television manufacturer for a sixth consecutive year.

While its rivals are cutting sales targets amid the global economic slowdown, Samsung’s TV segment head Yoon Boo-keun said the company will keep its 45 million sales target for the year.

Yoon Boo-keun told an IFA technology fair press conference that there was no question that Samsung should lead the global TV market for the sixth straight year because it had more varied products coupled with customised content.

“Prices are dropping and that’s a problem. But Samsung thinks the global TV market will rise 10 percent this year.’’ he said.

Samsung plans to unveil a variety of Internet-enabled TVs and will invest more for smart television content to offer wider options.

''Samsung customers could use a so-called 'YouTube on TV service,’ enabling them to search and watch 2D or 3D images on YouTube on TV and the service will be expanded to all Samsung TV products.’’

Viewers have moaned about the lack of smart TV content. Yoon said that Samsung will introduce at least 1,000 apps for its smart televisions by the end of the year.

Samsung also displayed a tablet with a 7.7-inch screen using an OLED panel, a sign that Samsung’s focus is on the OLED business rather than putting further resources into the saturated LCD market.

It also exhibited compact and mirrorless cameras, with Window 7 operating system-equipped displays and laptops.

Sony is launching its 4K movie streaming service which will mean consumers of its tellies can buy movies from the service, and stream to supported Sony 4K TV sets.

Dubbed Ultra the service starts on April 4 and will give Sony's 4K users some much needed content.

Sony Pictures Entertainment VP Jake Winett during a press event in San Francisco that Sony wanted to give consumers a streaming option that showcased the best 4K content that we can offer with the ease of a streaming service.

Ultra was first mentioned at CES this year, but Sony unveiled a few more details. The new service will offer 4K HDR movies to stream, including extras that have previously been able only on physical discs.

Some of the launch movies will include “Concussion,” “The Night Before” and “The Walk” as well as “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” Movies are priced at $30 a title. At launch, Ultra will only offer titles for sale, and no transactional VOD rentals.

Sony will promote the service this summer by giving buyers of their new 4K TV sets four free Ultra titles. However so far there is no plans for limited time rentals and you will have to buy the content for ever.

Ultra ties into UltraViolet, which is a cloud locker service backed by Sony. Consumers will be able to upgrade SD and HD quality movies from their UltraViolet cloud locker. Sony is also automatically adding any movie purchased on Ultra to UltraViolet, so consumers will be able to stream these titles on other 4K streaming services in the future.